CH - 06 The Islands and the Whales

The Islands and the Whales

Scotland/Denmark, Feature Documentary, 2016, 84 min

Winner at Hot Docs and Reykjavik International Film Festival
Nominated for Best Documentary at BAFTA Scotland

The hardy people of the Faroe Islands north of Scotland are fiercely proud of their thousand-year Viking tradition of hunting non-endangered pilot whales. When the hunt is on, director Mike Day’s camera is taking it in from a small motorboat—the chaos, danger and violence from all angles. When the hunt is over, bells ring and celebrations erupt all over the islands. But due to exposure to rapidly increasing ocean pollution, the mercury is rising to dangerous levels in the whale meat. Activists want to end the whale hunts, but the Faroese are only a tiny harbinger of a time when the entire world will face a crisis of mercury in its food supply from the sea. Subtitled